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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

China and the West: An Uncomfortable Connection

By The Hon. David Kilgour
on May 16, 2012

I admire the people of China greatly, including their often heroic
protests against acts of misfeasance by their government. To his credit,
the outgoing premier, Wen Jiabao, has spoken often about the necessity
for democratic reform. He recently had a major role in blocking the
advance of Bo Xilai to the nine-member Standing Committee of the
Communist Party. Bo and his mentor, former President Jiang Zemin, have
been among the worst offenders in the ongoing persecution of the Falun
Gong movement since July, 1999. Bo has been removed from his posts and
his wife, Gu Kailai, is under investigation concerning the murder of a
British citizen. The next to go will hopefully be Zhou Yongkang, the
Party head of security, who worked closely with Zemin and Bo in the
persecution of Falun Gong.

The differences real friends of China in open societies everywhere
have are with the party-state in Beijing, which is unworthy of the
Chinese people and has ruled contrary to their best traditional values
since seizing power in 1949. Four major areas of concern at home and
internationally today are Maoist governance practices, persecution of
religions, state capitalism, and systematic attacks on Internet freedom....

In mid-2006, Canadian lawyer David Matas and I were asked to report
independently on allegations that peaceful Falun Gong practitioners were
being killed for their vital organs. To our dismay, we located 52 kinds
of evidence that a new crime against humanity was occurring across
China on a large scale, which continues today. You can access our
revised report in 18 languages at http://organharvestinvestigation.net/ or our 2009 book, Bloody Harvest, which is available in Mandarin and English.

International gathering of Falun Gong practitioners

Matas and I have since travelled as volunteers to more than 40
national capitals, meeting with Falun Gong practitioners who managed to
leave both forced labour camps across China and the country itself,
citizens, legislators, government ministers, academics and journalists
in a campaign to persuade the party-state to cease a barbaric national
and international commerce. I understand that Wen Jiabao has recently
called on the party-state to cease the persecution.

The piece concludes that the persecution of Falun Gong, Christians,
Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims and other spiritual communities
continues across China and that “All people of faith and their
governments must let the party-state know continuously that they decry
its tactics of persecution and intimidation against … spiritual
communities.” ...

About Me

As an avid human rights activist and member of the China Freedom Blog Alliance, I focus mainly on safeguarding the rights of the Chinese people who are deprived of basic freedom under the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party.